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Robotic surgery is limited by the lack of haptic feedback to the surgeon. The addition of tactile information may enable surgeons to feel tissue characteristics, appropriately tension sutures, and identify pathologic conditions. Tactile feedback may also enable expansion of minimally invasive surgery to other surgical procedures and decrease the learning curve associated with robotic surgery. This paper aims to explore a system to provide tactile feedback.

A pneumatic balloon‐based system has been developed to provide tactile feedback to the fingers of the surgeon during robotic surgery. The system features a polydimethyl siloxane actuator with a thin‐film silicone balloon membrane and a compact pneumatic control system. The 1.0 × 1.8 × 0.4 cm actuators designed for the da Vinci system feature a 3 × 2 array of 3 mm inflatable balloons.

The low‐profile pneumatic system and actuator have been mounted directly onto the da Vinci surgical system. Human perceptual tests have indicated that pneumatic balloon‐based tactile input is an effective means to provide tactile information to the fingers of the surgeon.

Application of a complete tactile feedback system is limited by current force sensing technologies.

The actuators have been designed such that they can be mounted directly onto the hand controls of the da Vinci robotic system, and are scalable such that they can be applied to various robotic applications.

I think that the rationing of food will affect the general question of food supervision, but it is very difficult to foresee its effect with any degree of certainty. We must be prepared for changes in our prewar procedure. Our standard of living will be reduced and here the financial aspect enters into the question. In many cases, even in normal times, the poorer classes did not buy much bacon, excepting shank ends and the cheaper cuts, and consumed very little meat and butter, simply because they could not afford them, and it may easily happen that the effects, in view of rising prices and of this economic factor, may be reflected in the case of rationed perishable foods. This will probably lead to conditions such as I referred to in my earlier remarks, viz., deterioration of stocks in the retail shops and stores, owing to the poor keeping qualities of certain of the rationed foods. Already Inspectors have been called in by the Food Executive Officer to decide whether bacon in shops which has proved surplus to requirements owing to its not having been taken up by the registered customers, is fit for release or sale otherwise than by way of ration coupons.

Many members will be pleased to know that Miss Anne Turnbull, Meetings Organizer, Aslib, has announced her engagement to Mr Jim Elphick who was, for some six months during 1959, Accountant to the association. Miss Turnbull has given fifteen years of devoted service to Aslib and is the only remaining member of the staff who remembers the small Bloomsbury offices and who served under Miss Ditmas, the first Director. We wish her and her fiancé every happiness in the future and are glad that she means to carry on with her work after her marriage on Wednesday 18th May.

The “greening” of preserved vegetables by addition of sulphate of copper can only be regarded as an abominable form of adulteration, and it is passing strange that in this year of grace 1904 it should still be necessary to endeavour to impress the fact, not only upon the public generally, but upon the Government authorities and upon those who are concerned in the administration of the Food Acts and in adjudicating under their provisions. It ought surely not to be necessary to insist upon the tolerably obvious fact that the admixture of poisons with food is a most reprehensible and dangerous practice, and that the deliberate preparation and sale of food thus treated should be visited with condign punishment. The salts of copper are highly poisonous, and articles of food to which sulphate of copper has been added are not only thereby rendered injurious to health, but may be extremely dangerous when swallowed by persons who happen to be specially susceptible to the effects of this poison. After a lengthy investigation, the Departmental Committee appointed by the Local Government Board to report on the treatment of food with preservatives and colouring matters condemned the practice of adding salts of copper to food and recommended that the use of these poisons for such purposes should be absolutely prohibited. Without any such investigation as that which was conducted by the Departmental Committee—and a most thorough and painstaking investigation it was—it should have been sufficiently plain that to allow or to excuse the practice in question are proceedings utterly at variance with common sense.